Apple is extending subscription payments from newspapers and magazines to …

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Apple has extended its subscription-based pricing options beyond newspapers and magazines, allowing at least one game company to offer access to its games on a subscription basis. Seattle-based Big Fish Games will begin offering a $6.99 per month subscription that will provide access to "dozens" of games via an iPhone and iPad app. That could open the door for more companies to offer subscription access to specialized software services via iOS apps.

Until now, Big Fish has offered each of its titles as a separate app on the App Store for about $1.99 each. However, founder Paul Thelen saw the new iOS subscription APIs as a way to offer his company's games on an "all-you-can-eat" basis. The idea is that users could simply download one app, pay a monthly subscription via an iTunes account, and play whatever game struck their fancy. (Big Fish's catalog largely consists of casual puzzle and mystery games.)

"This is the first time that the technology has matched the business model," Thelen told Bloomberg News.

Apple originally offered subscription APIs to allow content publishers a way to offer an easy way to pay for periodical content such as newspapers and magazines. At first, it required that all this content be made available for purchase within apps at the same or lower price than available elsewhere, with Apple collecting its usual 30 percent cut. However, many publishers balked at the rules, and Apple later relaxed them to allow greater pricing freedom. Content providers could even forgo in-app subscription payment altogether as long as apps didn't include direct links to outside purchase mechanisms.

While that satisfied most publishers and content providers, many e-book readers—such as Amazon's Kindle app—and apps like Netflix and Dropbox had to remove links to outside stores or Web-based payment options.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that subscription payment APIs and its rules weren't geared towards SaaS (Software as a Service). And according to Thelen, Apple was reluctant to allow Big Fish to use subscription pricing for its games. "It took longer than usual to be approved," Thelen said. "They needed to be convinced there's a reason to charge customers every month."

Customers used to paying a few bucks or less to play a game indefinitely may also need convincing. However, if Big Fish's experiment proves successful, other game developers might try a subscription model. That could encourage software service providers to provide their wares via in-app subscription pricing.

Cue the 'What happens when you stop paying' argument. Its quite interesting, too: Say you go for it for 3 months = $21 = ~20 of their apps (based on $2 for all). Would you then lose access to ALL the apps, even when you have (in effect) paid for eg 20 of them?

That is the only off-putting thing about it in my opinion.

EDIT: Thinking about it, its similar to PS+ (only that is a lump sum up front) wherein you do lose access to some things.

Well, I imagine that Blizzard would never do it, but I do get your sentiment

In fact, I think this is exclusively where it has to go, because, as someone pointed above, it's not enough value to try out five or six $2.00 games per month. You could have bought them. But, if it's a service... like a pay-for MMORPG... then this is phenomenal. I've actually wondered why there hasn't been a well-known MMORPG for iPad yet.

Generally Big Fish's iPad games are somewhere around $5+, so the subscription could be well worth it. I had some travel time and knocked over Drawn in a few days, if you can pick and chose when to play you could get some great value out of it, I've been meaning to grab Drawn: Dark Flight HD and it's currently $6.99 anyway. I could play that and try a few other games with ease.

They do throw them into 99c sales from time to time though, so if you can wait, that's the way to go. But the model makes a bit of sense

Well, I imagine that Blizzard would never do it, but I do get your sentiment

In fact, I think this is exclusively where it has to go, because, as someone pointed above, it's not enough value to try out five or six $2.00 games per month. You could have bought them. But, if it's a service... like a pay-for MMORPG... then this is phenomenal. I've actually wondered why there hasn't been a well-known MMORPG for iPad yet.

The beauty is that the consumers will decide. If you don't think a game company is subscription worthy, just buy the apps you like. Free Market FTW.

I'll be curious to see if someone creates a "holding company" where small companies can band together and join the subscription process. There are thousands of apps that get little use, but if made part of an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, might see increased foot traffic. Of course, this might undermine the profitability of the iStore, then Apple brings down the axe.

Before people winge about Apple's 30% "Bite" of subs takings; I think this app highlights exactly why Apple insist on the 30% take on subs - if they didn't, all apps would be Free from the App store, and would simply insist on in-app payments and subscriptions to make the program usable.

It is interesting that the articles describe the games as "streamed" and not downloaded. Doesn't that imply that you could potentially not require as much space to save them and thereby keep more space on you ipad free for other stuff. especially if you have a 16 gig ipad, i could see this being a selling point.

This app is not a game!This App is not doing any thing special that other subscription services don't already do on iOS.This is nothing more than a remote desktop app (like iswifter or many others in the app store) that let you play flash games. This is justlocked down to their own server and their own flash games optimized for touch. You must have internet access for this to work (like all other remote desktop apps)

I'll be curious to see if someone creates a "holding company" where small companies can band together and join the subscription process. There are thousands of apps that get little use, but if made part of an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, might see increased foot traffic.

A very interesting idea, particularly around certain areas of expertise. There are many little apps that do a particular job well, but hunting them down can be a pain. Imagine a collection of pdf apps or photo apps where the first thing it does is ask what you want to do, then loads the appropriate app for that task. Would save me a ton of time hunting through the app store. Essentially a curated mini-collection of apps to solve many problems on a related theme.

For example, hook together a photo touchup app, a photo effects app, a panorama app, and a paint with fingers based on a photo app. As a consumer all I know is I want to mess with my photo, so I open the collection, say what I want to do, and get an app that allows me to do it.

Hmm... I'm not sure how I feel about subscription-based games. I like the idea for some games (e.g. WoW) but see the potential for abuse in the system. I hope it's easy to unsubscribe.

I also wonder if Apple will crack down on apps like the WoW thingy that lets you create auctions, check mail and use guild chat from your phone. That's an extra few dollars a month for WoW players, and I wonder if Apple will start saying they want a slice of that.

I sure hope Big Fish's iOS games are more efficient than their desktop games. I remember playing Shanghai Towers on my PowerBook, it would use over 50% CPU constantly for something that was a simple and essentially static game. Battery life was about 1.5 hours from full charge. Maybe it was using Flash, I'm not sure. Draining my iPhone or iPad battery in a few hours would suck.

There already are unofficial subscription based games like Order & Chaos that require a monthly fee. I don't know how they get away with it or if it falls under the same provisions that other apps like Amazon and Netflix had.

All this would do is force Apple into companies revenues which could then force the developer to charge more per month (amongst other possibilities).

I think Apple is getting a little too entrenched and involved into what developers can do on the App Store. Everyone's already used to the normal restrictions that have been set in place since the beginning, but stepping on toes and cutting into more and more revenue will not suddenly make developers begging to take part. Personally, if I were a smaller developer in the marketplace with a subscription based service, I would be more inclined to jump ship to Android (even being an "Apple guy" like myself, and assuming that Google handles this differently in the official Android Market for app subs; even if they don't, that doesn't lock you out of the platform in the unofficial market).

Personally, if I were a smaller developer in the marketplace with a subscription based service, I would be more inclined to jump ship to Android (even being an "Apple guy" like myself, and assuming that Google handles this differently in the official Android Market for app subs; even if they don't, that doesn't lock you out of the platform in the unofficial market).

I could see this going the way of cable: A couple of the big media companies buy up all the major game development companies, pull their games from the $0.99 store, and put them all behind a monthly paywall, where for $10/mo you get access to all their crappy stuff; for $20, you get most of their titles, and for an extra $5/mo you get access to Angry Birds -- the HBO of mobile games. You just want Angry Birds? Cough up $25/mo! Sure, Angry birds isn't worth $25 a month alone, but look at aaaall the other stuff you COULD play every month (but probably won't).

The difference is, I could come out with a game and sell it for $0.99 outright, and have just as much of a chance to make money as the big guys. Unfortunately, I can't start my own cable channel, no matter how Angry-Birds-awesome it would be. ...For the record, I don't really even like Angry Birds; but everybody else seems to.